The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis

In this oil sketch, the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens illustrated a moment from the ancient Roman poem Metamorphoses for the hunting lodge of King Philip IV of Spain. In the middle of a wedding celebration, the goddess of discord, Eris, has thrown a golden apple into the feast to provoke jealousy.

She succeeds in igniting a competition for the extraordinary fruit between Venus, goddess of beauty, who sits nude in the foreground; Juno, goddess of marriage, who wears a flowing veil at the center; and Minerva, goddess of war, who stands at the left in a helmet. Rubens humanized the gods through robust modeling of their bodies and facial expressions, a choice appropriate to the subject matter, a story of their pride and vanity.

As Oil on panel (27 × 42.6 cm (10 5/8 × 16 3/4 in.); Framed: 42.2 × 57.8 × 6.4 cm (16 5/8 × 22 3/4 × 2 1/2 in.)), the work shows the tool marks and layering choices typical of Peter Paul Rubens's output in this period — decisions about ground, underpainting, and glaze that a photograph can only partly convey.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Likeness was only part of the job; the painting also had to argue for the sitter's place in the world.

Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how Peter Paul Rubens's output from this period is understood.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”